3:42 Necrotic damage.

Eunice delicately placed the ointment jar back on one of the new wall shelves, then walked around Terezio's desk and turned to perch herself on its edge.  It had, like the rest of the basement study room, been cleaned and organized, and now held stacked spells, theorems and studies sorted first by type, then into alphabetical order.  The reason for the miraculous change was sitting on a pillow in the middle of the floor, copying a fragment of spell theory that had been written there.  Fastidious to a fault, she would read a line of the spell calculations twice, copy it on to the parchment, check it twice against what was written on the floor, then erase the line from the floor.  At that rate, the few lines that Eunice was sure would only take her fifteen minutes to copy had taken their current scribe three quarters of an hour.

"But you can't be more than fifty," the apprentice argued, continuing a conversation that her accomplice in tidying had been indulging, by occasionally offering clips and phrases, for nearly two hours.

"I am," the grey-haired mage replied matter-of-factly, even though she knew the comment had been an attempt at a compliment, "By fourteen years.  And I look older than that."

Eunice shifted uncomfortably, her code of politeness strictly forbidding her to agree with the woman on the floor.  She looked around the room as if she didn't know exactly what was in it, trying desperately to think of something positive to say.  "Well, if not a potion... well... maybe a spell, then?  Wish?"

"No.  Its divine equivalent- miracle- would have a better chance, and that only if I had believed in any deity at all," came the sour reply.  "But I don't, which leaves most practitioners' potential divine force below the efficacy threshold of the potential defense.  Contrary to the current teachings, there are considerable psionic ramifications to a target's incredulity."

"Wait, why would there be an active potential defense?" Eunice asked, forgetting her discomfort.  "The cleric wouldn't be attacking you, so why should his or her efficacy threshold calculation have to include a potential defense?"

"He or she would have to calculate their efficacy threshold against the opposing 'will' of natural entropy, with or without the psionic modifier, depending on the target," Trizelle answered, looking up from her copying work, which was nearly complete.  "If the target's own will force were the default opposing force, all healing mages would run the risk of permanent psychic damage upon the attempt to heal themselves."

"Most clerics I know are a bit... unstable," Eunice laughed, peeking over at Trizelle's impeccable, angular script handwriting.

"We all have our moments," the older mage agreed, looking up at Eunice at last.  "Be careful; spell work like this has a way of leaving its mark on people."

"Oh," Eunice said, backing up immediately as though she'd been yelled at.  Trizelle noted the reaction, but made no outward sign of her perception of it.

"Trizzi, are you still in the playroom?" Druce called from upstairs.

"Playroom?" Eunice whispered, amazed.

Trizelle merely scoffed as she gingerly rose from the floor.  "Follow me directly or close this door tightly as soon as I leave."

"Yes, Lady- Master Ranclyffe," the apprentice said in a hushed voice, dropping her hands before her and folding them as she was accustomed to doing for Terezio.

Trizelle left briskly, allowing her eyes to sweep the area as soon as she crossed through the doorway.  There was no movement from the study behind her, and the court mage of Urmlaspyr sighed inwardly at the rigid- and in her opinion, wholly unnecessary- class-and-rank respect that was rammed so deeply into Cormyrean hearts. 

That reminds me- I'll likely have to retrain Gimago when I get back.

Firming her lips into the thin line that was more comfortable on her face than any form of smile, she gathered the wide skirt of her dress and began to carefully ascend the steps.

Eunice listened to the interspersed whispers and light thuds that indicated that Trizelle was pulling her pain-wracked lower limbs up the stairs.  She turned, slowly and distractedly, thinking on the curt answers to her queries concerning what healing methodologies could possibly restore elasticity to the rapidly decaying joints and muscles, as she cast a glance at the remaining spell calculations on the floor.  When she finally moved to the door to as Trizelle had asked, however, she found Dresan, arms crossed, leaning in the door frame with a smirk on his face.  For a moment, all Eunice could think of was the way she'd locked him in with the Drow trickster upstairs.

"You understand that writing, don't you?" Dresan asked teasingly, as though he already knew the answer.  "The way you look at it- I can tell it speaks to you."

Eunice stared at the man blankly, aghast at being caught.  "I- I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Lord Hawke," she finally managed with a dry throat and trembling lips.

"I am neither Battlemage Ranclyffe nor Master Ranclyffe," Dresan reminded her, moving into Terezio's study and closing the door behind him.  He watched, pleased, as Eunice's face lost a bit of its color the instant the stairwell was blocked from her view.  "And I don't intend to tell them, so there's no need to fear.  I seek the equal distribution of magical knowledge to all practitioners of those arts, and I say that nothing stands between you and the understanding of that spell but your own trepidation."

"My Lord Hawke, I'm just a divination apprentice," Eunice smiled carefully as she backed up a pace.  "I cannot understand that writing at all; I have no art with neither it nor anything like it.  I pray you forgive my ignorance."

Dresan chuckled, a warm, burbling sound that seemed unlike a sound of actual pleasure.  It struck Eunice more as a derisive jab, as a sound that someone might offer to someone who was weak or mentally infirm.

" 'Just a divination apprentice.' "  The mouse brown haired mage strode calmly into the room and turned toward the half-copied spell that remained on the floor.  "You cannot deny that the work calls to your curiosity; I saw you directly disobey what Master Ranclyffe commanded you.  Nothing burst into flame when you did it, but something worse happened."

" 'Worse'...?"

Eunice turned her head slightly, confused at what precisely was different in the man before her.  The temptation to simply touch him with a spell so that she could know for sure began to eat at her.  Dresan, with a smile still playing on his lips, invited her to step toward him with an open hand, and although her gut screamed at how strangely dangerous it seemed, she reached out and stepped closer to him to take it.  At once, the mouse brown haired mage slid behind her with the grace of a feline creature, guiding her down to the place where the spell work lay unattended.

"Isn't it funny?" he mused, leaning his cheek on her upper arm briefly.  "Isn't it simply amazing how Terezio himself pokes at the gates of the Hells, but somehow imagines that he is right when he forbids others from doing the same?  Why do you think that is?"

The apprentice looked at Dresan as though she'd never seen him before.  "I don't know," she replied with a shrug that was intended to get his hands off her.  Although it didn't physically work, the intention behind it did, and the man moved slightly to his right.

"I think it's to prevent being discovered," he offered.  "What year are you?"

"I don't go by years," Eunice admitted.  "I'm not really a war wizard; I'm a trade student.  When I return home, I'm supposed to bring the teachings back, to teach the rest of my classmates as a journeyman."

"A trade student," Dresan nodded thoughtfully.  "I wonder how Battlemage Ranclyffe would take it if you were to tell him that you realized his calculations were, quite simply put, wrong."

Eunice thought back to the public denial of the existence of Shadow Children, but fought hard to keep her face as plain as it had been before.  "I would never-"

"And why not?  If you had written a spell like this, wouldn't he correct you?  And he would expect you to respect him enough to heed his words- now, why doesn't that work both ways?"

Eunice couldn't think of a single thing to say, and was left staring at Dresan with the look of a deer caught by surprise in a thicket.

"You are a talented, intelligent spell worker, I know.  It is because of this that I trust you to decipher this spell work for me."

"I appreciate your faith, but I don't believe I can help you," the apprentice argued, shifting a bit so that there was more space between herself and Dresan.  "This seems to me to be some kind of conjuration spell, and I-"

"You know more about it than that," Dresan soothed.  "Of all people to tell lies- you must think you're the only divination mage in the land."

Eunice bit the backs of her lips.  "Yes, I was curious about it, and yes, I believe I understand it- some of it.  I think.  But Battlemage Ranclyffe has never taught me anything like this; he's actually warned me away from the study of the fundamentals of conjuration and infernal spell work."

"Is that because he does not wish those fundamentals known, or because he himself does not know them?" Dresan smiled.  "Or worse- could it be both?"

The young woman shook her head.  "I can't tell from this.  It seems a bit... demanding, the way it's written.  There's... no way anyone could come up with this much potential will energy.  And... these modifiers... this isn't divine spell writing format, so actually, the will purchase is probably undervalued, too."  The strange feeling that Dresan was not quite himself persisted, and she struggled valiantly to at least obey one thing she'd been told by her teaching mage.  "Master Ranclyffe was copying it; she would know-"

"Calling back that soon-to-be lich is cheating," Dresan teased.  "Think for yourself, Eunice.  That's the only way to true knowledge, and with that knowledge will come freedom."

"But freedom from what?" Eunice reasoned.  "I'm not bound."

"Not physically, that's true enough," Dresan laughed.  "Funny thing, isn't it, what happened to Trizelle?  She did tell you why she suffers from bone, ligament and muscle decay, correct?"

"No," Eunice replied, crossing her arms.  "I don't know if it's my business, anyway."

"Oh, it is.  You see, Terezio- the great Battlemage Ranclyffe, rather- found that his daughter was talented, as you are, with infernal forces.  And he, jealous of her gift, abandoned to none other than Shade itself, whose mages- in trade for teaching her wondrous spells and theories of magic- inflicted all sorts of wickedness upon her.  The damage is progressive- and necrotic."

"Gods give her strength," the apprentice whimpered in spite of herself, wondering precisely how much pain the woman to whom she'd spoken was used to feeling on any given day.

"You say better than she, who lost her faith in the divine years ago, in the experimentation holding cells of Thultanthar," Dresan sighed, sounding genuinely mournful.  Eunice turned her face to him briefly, and he very gently smoothed her cheeks.  "You must take up your own learning now.  I tell you not to harm you, but to save you.  You don't know, and likely can't even imagine, what it was like to be raised by what is left of that woman."

The divination apprentice remembered the halting, awkward conversation with the terse mage.  With trembling in her spirit, she finally allowed the barest whisper of a spell to escape her, and was satisfied to sense nothing foreboding.

"Ah, Eunice, come forward into your power," Dresan smiled encouragingly.  "Pretending at docility, you still clearly disobey the command of both crown and mentor by casting your spells without giving their subjects due notice.  I ask only that you reach toward your own good.  In doing so, shall anyone be harmed?"

"You would; yes," a female voice called from the doorway.  Eunice instantly peered over Dresan's shoulder to see his mother, leveling a non-plussed glower at the back of her son.  "That is an elite class, multi-school, tenth rank spell theorem, according to the College.  The banishing element requires a three to one ratio of potential arcane will force against the targeted creature's potential arcane will defense with infernal modifier.  However, the practitioner must both initiate and sustain the binding element of the spell with a potential arcane will force that rises in a pure two to one relationship with the opposing will force of the creature being targeted, including both the infernal and the psionic force modifiers."

"That... that's impossible," Eunice breathed, squinting at Trizelle incredulously.  "That's physically impossible.  Where does the additional arcane will force come from?"

"Watch, and perceive," the older woman said simply, walking slowly over to Dresan, who stood and turned to face her.

"You merely delay the inevitable," he said in a tender, loving voice.

"Break possession," Trizelle replied in a fierce whisper, suddenly reaching out the first two fingers of her right hand to touch Dresan directly in the center of his head.  "Bind."

Dresan's eyes promptly rolled up in his head, and Eunice quickly popped up to catch his falling body against her chest as he fell backward.  All color drained from his face instantly, and a cold sweat broke out over his entire body.  When the apprentice diviner looked up to comment on it, the words were stopped cold in her mouth by the sight of a beautiful, dark haired woman with radiant honey-brown eyes.  Her right hand, lush and pink, formed a claw of force where a ball of unfathomably dark magic energy spun like a globe.  Eunice could spy a small, but resplendent white palace, which spun suspended within it.

"Return to Argent," the woman demanded, crushing both the globe of energy and the image trapped within it in her grasp.

"And there," a flatteringly sweet voice crooned, "I will eagerly await you."

A tide of energy burst out from the woman's closed hand, sending a shock wave from that epicenter throughout the entire house.  Eunice pressed her eyes shut and let go of Dresan to cover her face momentarily.  Dresan fell to the floor, covering his own face quite by accident.  Druce, who had come down the stairs to see why Trizelle had returned to Terezio's study, caught sight of her daughter as she should look at a mere sixty four years, and stared in shock until the shock wave reached her too.  It soaked into her bones and rattled there as though it would stun her heart into stillness.

For a few moments, there was neither sound nor movement from any of the direct witnesses to Trizelle's work.  The mage herself, looking around herself at them, repressed the urge to scream, even though she knew none of them would hear her do it.  When the apprentice mage began stirring first, like a blind, freshly born rodent of some sort, Trizelle raised an interested eyebrow, then restored herself to stony indifference.

"Master Ranclyffe?" Eunice managed, not quite able to hear herself yet.  She coughed twice, then tried again.  "Master Ranclyffe?"

"Mother?" Dresan groaned from the floor, not moving at all.  "I know you're standing there."

It was so like his lazy responses every time she would appear in his room to wake him up for classes in his youth that Trizelle rolled her eyes more out of habit than actual annoyance.

Eunice, hearing no response to either call, opened her eyes.  There, with her creased eyes closed and her worn hands clasped before her, stood a completely dispassionate Trizelle.  Not a single strand of her grey hair seemed out of place since the time Eunice had last seen her, just a few minutes before; there was no flush of effort in her cheeks nor was there any trembling excitement from the expended magical energy.   Nothing betrayed the fact that just moments ago, she performed what had seemed to the apprentice diviner like an impossible spell.

Trizelle opened her eyes and raised one grey eyebrow at the apprentice.

In the silence that reigned in Terezio's study, Druce stepped inside to look at her daughter.

"What- what's happened?" Dresan asked, terror stealing into his chest like cold water.  He scrambled to sit up and away from Eunice, who didn't move a single inch.  "What did I do?"

"Trizelle, answer people when they speak to you," Druce managed, her voice made small even though it was reproving.  "Is your son alright?  Are you?"

"The composite efficacy threshold is very high," Trizelle prompted, looking calmly at Eunice.  "Why?"

For a few moments, Eunice stared at Trizelle, utterly astounded at her ability to so quickly transform from a masterful active spell worker to a mere teacher. "It shouldn't have worked at all- not for an arcanist.  The purchase is... much too..."

"Practitioners of divine magic can make lower will purchases against the opposing defense, yes," Trizelle admitted, "but arcanists merely need compensate for not having a extraplanar modifier in their calculations.  In order to do that, I added an element."

"You added an element?" Eunice shot back.  "The spell even as written isn't possible-"

"It is possible, because you just saw it done," the court mage of Urmlaspyr replied quietly.  "I added an absorption component to the initial binding spell.  I wouldn't suggest it for most other practitioners, however, as the absorption of hostile energy does inflict damage."

In the silence that followed, Trizelle opened her hand and brought it across her body as though she were wiping a table or a dish.  Before her, the remaining writing on the floor disappeared, as did all the writing on the scroll.  Eunice bit her lips as she watched everything melt away.

"Did you pay attention to the dissertations on pact magic from Battlemage Ranclyffe?"

"He was... distracted... a few times by the demands of the armed guard around here, but... yes," Dresan admitted.  "His opinions about warlocks are... rather strong."

"I am going home," Trizelle said firmly.  "I suggest you prepare to follow."

Druce put a hand on her daughter's arm, which elicited a wince from which Trizelle was slow to recover.  For the first time, Eunice realized that it probably hurt the court mage of Urmlaspyr to be touched, and wondered how the woman could possibly get any melee class spell work done.

"I intend to see Urmlaspyr, if I am spared and the summer comes.  I want to visit all the temples, buy a good handmade tapestry, and go to the middle of that dark quarter.  And most of all, daughter, I want to sit in the back of one of your classes again.  With your father, of course, so he can explain things to me quietly."

Trizelle turned her head toward her mother, but looked down at the floor as though she were not capable of telling where precisely she was.  "I'll talk to Jindranae."

All three of the occupants of the room watched Trizelle break away from her mother and walk resolutely toward the stairwell.  As she ascended, Druce turned her attentions to the gaping apprentice.

"Eunice, go home.  I think you've been through enough for the day."

Without a word, the healthy woman curtsied, then nearly fled the room.  In her wake, Druce walked over to the door to the study and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Come on; you were told to prepare your things."

Dresan turned, looked at the paper- which seemed out of place now, on a completely clean floor- then sighed as he walked past Druce and out of the door.  As he walked up the stairs, a self-satisfied chuckle seemed to echo up to his ears from behind him.  Gritting his teeth and pursing his lips, the Tiefling pushed himself up the steps toward the light of day.

"By all means, run, my son.  Run as far from me as you can, for as long as you can.  But I will get what I desire.  All in good time."

Behind him, Druce looked down at her arm, which suddenly pulsed with more pain than usual.  She frowned as she remembered the last time she had felt it do the same thing, deciding within herself to talk to her husband about it as soon as he arrived home.

3:41 The wanderer's first steps.

Rafa allowed the blonde to slowly trail her adventurous fingers down the old scars and chemical burns on his chest, past his rib cage, and over his hard-working abdominal muscles.  She delayed there, considering the area where a sharp capitol V divided the man from the beast, and as she did, Rafa shifted to kiss the side of her head.

"I'm off," he sighed, reaching his free hand down to remove hers.  She clung on to it immediately.

"Oh, stay a while longer, won't you?" she asked, snuggling closer even as he sat up to attempt to get his arm out from behind her.  "It's not morning yet, is it?"

"It is," Rafa chuckled, moving again.  "Couple minutes more, and the cocks that're outside'll tell you so, too."

"Just once more," the woman insisted with a half-laugh at his playful bawdiness, rolling over to throw her arm over his side.  "I won't charge extra."

Rafa pressed his lips to her forehead, then scooted himself out of the bed.  The chilly air did more work against his will to leave than the woman did, but the hopeful glow that peered through the poorly-cut window strengthened his resolve.  He shuffled toward the space on the floor between the ladder back chair and the rough hewn dresser where his clothes sprawled.

"Gotta get back to work," he muttered, more to himself than to his paramour.  "Deryn'll be up, soon."

"She's a creature, she what dragged you here," the woman spat as she sat up to watch Rafa root through his things.  "Carol?  Kristen?  Whatever- you ought to leave that lying bitch right where she is.  Let her take care of Deryn, like she's paid to."

"We're both paid to, Lishrae." 

Rafa ignored her purposeful twisting of his words and Karri's name in favor of squatting to palm his purse of coins, buried under his carelessly discarded tunic and long pants.  Selecting seven silver pieces out of it, he turned to hand them over, only to find that the intended recipient had folded her hands under her arms in protest.  He made no move to get the money any closer to her, and she sat up in the bed with daggers in her looks.

"No, really, when will you be rid of her?  You know what she is.  So what is this game you're playing?"

An easy smile came to Rafa's face, since it seemed strange, yet funny to him that a street woman should be so protective of a relatively new customer.  "Does it matter to you, dear honeycomb, so long as I let you play, too?"

"Ha ha," the woman scoffed, getting out of bed herself.  In the chill of the morning, goosebumps broke out instantly on her creamy pale body.  She closed the space between them easily, easing her hands around his hips and lacing her slender fingers together behind his still-bare back.  "Maybe I'm just employing a bit of financial planning; trying to find out when my suddenly faithful customer is going to be just as suddenly gone."

Rafa bent his upper body down slightly in order to nuzzle the woman's cheek, and she kissed him in response- a long, adventurous joining that both enjoyed.  The man began retreating first, just as he had done from the bed earlier, but only succeeded because he was a head taller than his companion.

"Mmmnn," he mused with a new, mischievous smile gracing his unshaven features.  "I wonder if all that good financial planning sweetened your lips just so."

"Will you tell me?" the woman insisted, refusing to unhook her arms from him.  "When you go?  I know you will, but-"

"I don't even know when, or if, I'm going anywhere," Rafa scoffed gently.  When the blonde responded to that by refusing to budge from her place, he laid the side of his face on top of her hair.  "But if I do, I'll tell you- so you can plan your budget accordingly, how's that?"

"I've got plenty of men, you understand," the woman claimed, finally letting go of Rafa to wrap her arms around her own nakedness.  "Not like it'll be some big hardship, but... but you know... I mean, I like the good ones.  That's all.  You bring your own spices, and you come when you say; you don't leave a body standing out for the guards to snatch.  You pay well- extra, if you count the stuff- you do for me like I do for you, and you don't... you know... rough me up.  That's all.  You understand."

Rafa looked at her for a few moments before turning back to his clothes again.  The coins went onto the nearby wooden dresser.

"Yeah.  I understand," he echoed as he began tugging them over his suddenly-chilly body.

The woman turned around, walked back toward the bed and fished around under the pillows.  Just as the former Purple Dragon managed to drag his shirt over his head, she turned around with his battered leather flask in one hand and a small cloth pouch in the other.

"It's not empty," she noted with a half-hearted smile, when his eyes finally rested on her again, "and neither is the magic bag... so that's something, isn't it?"

Rafa offered her a smirk of his own and held out his hand.  The woman opted to toss the flask to him instead, then gave him a real smile when he effortlessly snatched the worn thing out of the air.  The liquor left inside it sang against its metal confines.

"You want another breather or two, to go with it?"

The tan skinned man paused in thought for a few moments, which was long enough for the woman to move to her nightstand with the cloth bag, shake some of its contents out into the clay bowl atop the tiny wax candle, and pick up her flint.  While the motion of making a spark with the flint had been familiar to Rafa, lighting the wick that sat beneath the woman's small clay bowl had not been.  The night before, it had taken him a solid minute just to get the flame going properly, but she, the expert, had a tendril of smoke rising from the clay bowl in the same time.

"Come; one breather, and you'll be able to stand another day with her better."

"Sure," Rafa finally caved, moving toward the nightstand.  As she'd done the night before, the woman bent over the bowl and inhaled the smoke, then breathed out on his face.  Pure as the odorless fume was, his head spun at once, and she smirked as his cheeks promptly grew ruddier than normal.  She turned around to allow a bit more of the substance into her lungs, and was pleasantly surprised by the sensation of a delicate hold of her bare hips.  His hands were warm, but not damp, and the gentle contact neither intruded upon her sensibilities nor impeded her movement- it was his unspoken request for permission.  The woman breathed in the smoke again, a bit more deeply this time than the last, then turned and stood on her tip toes to plant a kiss on Rafa's lips.  She expected him to shudder or cough a bit, but he did neither, accepting both of her gifts with an air of experience that surprised her.  She slid her hands over his hips and around toward his butt as he intensified the kiss, pulling her closer to him and allowing her to gently press one bare thigh against his awakening manhood.  Smoke sighed out of their nostrils and swirled around them, creating a strangely relaxing, mystic scene.

"Mmmn," she teased when they could finally bear to part from each other, some minute or two later.  "You will never get to work if we keep this up."

 Rafa scoffed quietly as he stood back and took a swig from his flask, but made no actual verbal response.  The woman picked up her hand, and he ducked his upper body down slightly to allow her to run her fingers through his hair as though he were a pet.  When she reached the ends of his dark, thick hair, she tugged at it slightly.  As though in response, Rafa reached for her other hand, pulled it to himself and kissed it.  She let go of his hair reluctantly, and he stood straight, offered her a smile, then turned toward the door.

"Sune's blessings to ya, Blade Unessmus," the woman offered airily, watching him go toward it as fondly as a real girlfriend might.  She began counting the seconds until he answered, promising herself that she would keep him indoors by any means necessary if she reached ten before hearing his voice.

The title hit him like a basin full of ice cold water, as it no doubt was intended to do.  He answered slowly, and though his tone was without bitterness, he still sounded as though it had been physically painful to move his jaw enough to speak.  "Just Rafa, Lishrae."

Eight, the woman sighed inwardly, lazily waving her hand at his back as the door opened before him.  Any guard'll jail him.

But by the time she'd even thought to reconsider letting him go, the tan skinned man strode out into the cool of a Daerlun morning.  He hadn't gotten ten steps without having a man peek out from behind a door to a small house two streets over.  Some other woman's patron, likely stealing away to his honest wife, while Rafa himself, wifeless, walked an oddly carefree man.  Neither man had seen the other before, yet the furtiveness of the man's look, the way he guiltily pushed himself out of the door and moved quickly past the sole witness to his indiscretion, folded Rafa's mind in on itself.

She's going to give me that look, he thought as he looked at a market seller who was pushing a covered cart down the other side of the alley.  Unlike the other man, who'd hustled by the seller without so much as a short morning greeting, Rafa nodded his head slightly as the seller moved past him.   Behind the seller trundled a red-faced husband with two skipping children in hand, and Rafa offered him a tight smile even though the man was giving him a somewhat dutiful glare.

That, Rafa thought abstractly.  That strange kind of... like she's pretending to be okay with it all when she's not.  Except she is; somehow I know...or maybe I don't, but I feel like I do.

He stepped out of the alley and into a better-paved street, moving toward the center of the city.

The shy sun was not yet strong enough in the sky to provoke dark shadows from the buildings Rafa passed, but he stopped in the darkness just beyond the temple's hill anyway.  The impressive, walled cathedral was hard to miss, with its hanging greenery and beautiful decorative work.  The birds in the area seemed to be just waking, calling to each other to see who among them was ready for the new day.

Sune, the raven haired man sighed inwardly to himself.  Love based only upon appearances.  Funny we should have come to a place dominated by a red-headed goddess of vapid, skin-deep infatuation and good looks.

And just as Rafa moved to cross to the other side of a main street, a cloaked figure whirled around another corner, crashing into his right shoulder.

"Sorry," Rafa said without thinking, turning slightly over the shoulder to catch sight of who had struck him.

"Oh!" the cloaked figure said in an emotional, uneven voice.  "I- I- I didn't look..."

Even in its strange, mournful sounding, the voice was familiar, and when the brown eyed former guard caught sight of a pair of sunken, sickly blue-green eyes nearly hidden beneath the ash grey hood, there could be no doubt of who was standing before him.

"Percival, man," Rafa repeated, turning around to offer a more genuine apology.  "I- are you alright?"

Percy stiffened a bit at the use of his name, but recognized Rafael mere seconds later.  "Oh, it's you," he sighed heavily.

"Yes; small city," Rafa replied with an edge of bitter humor.  "Where's Merri, Dan, and Kim?"

The mage shook his cloaked head with an acrid laugh of his own.  "I have no idea," he managed.  "Of Merri and Dan, anyway.  But Kim, I... I'm afraid I'm rather sure."

Rafa raised an eyebrow.

"What's happened to her?"

Percy bit his lips, dropped his head, and offered a short pant of emotion.  "There... was... a bear, and..."

"Tell me Dan didn't pick a fight and then leave her there with it," Rafa interjected at once, stepping closer to Percy to preserve the man's pride and privacy.

"Oh gods, that's exactly what he did," Percy cried unabashedly, unable to contain his emotion any longer.  "She told him not to go in there, she told him, and he did it anyway, like he always does, because he's the leader, oh gods, I wish I'd never listened to that man a day in my life!  She's dead, ser; she's dead!"

"Come on, come on, now," Rafa urged, reaching out tentatively.  Upon noticing that Percival made no contest of his closeness, the former soldier actually slung an arm over his shoulder.  "Are you quite sure?  I mean, did you and Merri stand there and-"

"No!" Percy cried at once.  "No, we-"

"Well, mages are curious creatures," Rafa comforted.  "You yourself should know that folks with magic are capable of astounding things... amazing feats of survival... maybe she-"

"She's dead, ser, I know it," Percy sobbed, turning himself into Rafa's body to sob on his chest like a child.  "If she wasn't dead when we- when we left her, then- then she's got to be dead by now, that- that cave is hours away from here!"

"Alright, alright," Rafa sighed, still not quite as sure about the finality of the situation as Percy seemed to be.  "Come then, shouldn't you rather take a stiff drink in her honor?  For dying well?  She's at peace now; she's away from those who wouldn't listen to her good counsel and from the bad fortune that put her with them, and that's-"

"But what if she's not- if she hasn't died well?" Percy sniffed.  "What if the bear is toying about with her, torturing her, pissing on her bones?"

Rafa felt the alchemic that Lishrae'd given him race through his body, making all his veins feel as though they were throbbing.  When he closed his eyes, there were flashes of pink, green, and blue behind the eyelids.

"I... don't recall that bears... do that," he finally responded, forcing himself to stand straight upright and open his eyes.  "Bears... they eat their dung, you know, to keep their dens clean, so if she's gone... she's quite gone."

"Oh gods!" Percival cried out at once, not at all comforted by that information.  The sound of his misery brought Rafa back firmly to himself.

"About Merri and Dan- look, pardon me, but I notice you're not with them.  I don't know what they may do, but do you want to go back?  To collect her bones, or kill the bear in vengeance, or... something?"

Percival broke from Rafa's chest and looked up at him with a sort of angered confusion.  "I- I can't do that," he sputtered in disbelief.  "Do you think that I alone- you're making fun of me, aren't you?"

"I'm not!" Rafa shot back with hands raised sharply in surrender, astonished at the accusation.  "I mean, I'd help you; I'd go with you!  Why should I send you alone?"

"Ser, I'm sorry," Percy sighed, watching Rafa slowly lower his hands.  "I don't mean- look, the bear quite nearly killed Dan, you see, that's why Kim stepped forward in the first place.  Dan- I don't know where he is, he- he was bleeding something awful, and I can't heal, and Merri had run off somewhere- I- Dan called and called, but-"

"So you don't think he's alive, either?"

"No, Merri came back with potions- one for me, one for Dan- and I asked where was Kim's, and she said... she said... she-"

"Probably she said Kim was already dead," Rafa supplied, careful to keep his opinion out of his voice as he moved forward to lay a comforting hand upon Percy's slender shoulder again.  "Well, remember; I took on fighters with a broomstick and am still alive to drink to it.  I know where to get a cheap staff, so that's solved, and- I don't have enough gold to commission a healing from an alchemist too, but- but I know a good potion when I see one, and I can just-"

"You're really a thief, aren't you?" Percy smirked, somehow awkwardly amused by the prospect.

"My mother, on the advice of my great grand-sire, sent me off to be a soldier in the supreme effort to get me not to be a thief," Rafa admitted.  "The dear hearts; I hope my mother pays me no heed, wherever she now rests.  Come, that cheap staff I mentioned ought to have made it to the market place by now."

"You'll really help me, then?  After what Dan-"

"Number one, you're not Dan," Rafa stated flatly, turning around to head toward the marketplace.  "Number two, Kim seems a decent sort.  Number three, it may do you some help, to bury her bones at least.  You can make peace with the fact that she's gone, maybe, if you just do her that justice.  I know what it is to not be able to do that."

Percy thought for a few moments, then adjusted the hood so that his eyes were better hidden.  "Thank you."

There was silence between the two men as they sliced through the waking streets toward the shops and sellers, but Rafa, ever watchful, noticed that either Percival's looks or his party's reputation had already taken strong hold in Daerlun.  The few people setting up shop for the day stole furtive glances.  Older children, helping their parents, would awkwardly turn away from them or snicker to each other, and younger children clearly ran away.  Rafa remembered Kullie's reaction to Percy's eyes, and gave a short grunt of displeasure.

"Don't worry about it," Percy said quietly behind him.  "I'm used to it."

"Doesn't make it right," Rafa commented, only a bit louder.

"Can't change."

"Only for want of enough people to do the changing." 

"I meant how I-"

Rafa stopped and looked over his shoulder at the mage, who froze in his tracks and looked up.

"Well, I mean folks ought to treat people like people," he said seriously, loudly enough for the people near the two of them to hear.  "I know wars, whole wars, been fought over nothing more than how folks look, or whatever airy spirit they worship.  It's a curse and a madness, and it continues because there aren't enough people that realize how idiot it is."

There was a brief pause during which it seemed as though Percy and the two sellers closest to the pair, along with the four children helping them set up their stalls, all forgot to breathe.  Rafa, meanwhile, closed his eyes and pursed his lips, watching the colors dance behind his eyes again.  A wave of calming heaviness, unwelcome in the day, stole from his chest down through his gut as though he had drunk a sleeping potion.

What was it? he thought to himself distantly.  Brain... breath?  Powder?  Smoke?

"You're right, ser," a female voice dared.  "Come, sit for a while; the grief'll pass."

"I'll take him in hand, madam," Percival said suddenly, reaching up to take hold of Rafa's shoulder.  "You're kind; thank you."

Rafa made no contest against the bird-boned hands that pulled him back away from the market and down a convenient side street.  For a brief moment, he felt a prickling, as though hundreds of thin metal needles had suddenly rolled over his skin.  For one terrible moment, he thought Lishrae's horror story of another customer's overdose had befallen him, and sweat beaded up on his brow.

"Percival, I-"

"What would possess you to take powdered brainweed into your system?" Percy hissed urgently before Rafa could even finish his fragment of thought.  "Don't you know that you could send yourself properly insane?"

The former solder allowed his upper body to crumple slightly as he began to snicker.  "I do know," he chuckled after a few seconds.  "I definitely know.  Amazing, the idiot things I've done, these past few weeks-  lived more in twenty days than I had in over twenty years."

"Oh gods, you're going," Percy worried at once, letting Rafa go to throw his hands up in exasperation.

"Aw, hush," Rafa replied, pushing weary laughs out of a body that wanted to collapse into sleep.  "I'm not gone crazy- yet.  It's just- I'm tired again.  I feel tired, that's all.  But come along; I'll get that staff, and-"

"What makes you think you can fight a bear with a poison running around in your- are you sure you're not crazy?" the mage retorted.  His eyes, stormy sea blue-green, caught the deep chestnut brown orbs of the man before him at last, and their urgency seemed to be translated there.

"It'll be fine in about a half hour," Rafa sighed, straightening himself and stepping away from the fearful magic worker.  "Is it not that long, the journey to the cave, or-"

"Two and a half hours, walking," Percival replied.  "Running at break neck speed was still a proper hour.  And please drink water.  That other man was quite obviously a drunken master, but you are not."

Rafa blinked at him.  "A what?"

"A drunken master- a rare sort of monk-like warrior.  Instead of meditating on a god, or a set of precepts, they focus on nothing more than their flagon and whatever pushed them to the bottom of it.  I made the acquaintance of one, while I was...  Anyway, when I was well enough to sit up and read, I sought every scholarly study on the subject- and found that for some reason, there aren't very many."  The mage shrugged as though the information, news to Rafa, were common to everyone.  "I learned a great deal, but what interested me- still interests me, honestly- is that none of the studies had any information about why, or precisely how one is initiated.  No explanation of how one recognizes another- for direct mentoring seems to be the only form of teaching permitted among them- is there some sort of arcane magic spark, or vision?  Some mystical indicator that the one particular alcoholic must be lifted out of the beggars' row?"

Rafa's mind blanked completely for a few moments, as though it were a child's slate, wiped completely clean.

"Monk-like warriors," he echoed distantly.  "With meditation.  Emptying the mind and sinking into the soul, that kind of thing?"

"Well... yes," Percival answered, looking worriedly into Rafa's dull, distant eyes.  "I hadn't really studied the- well, there are three recorded types of medi-"

"Bear," Rafa growled, turning around toward the market as though it were the most important thing in the world.

"I think-"

"First things first," Rafa interjected, raising a hand up to shush Percy's thoughts without turning around.  "Priorities.  Kim, then Karri, then Derryn and Lishrae."

"What?" the sea green eyed mage asked, completely confused.

"Priorities.  Come on."

Not a soul cast a second glance at Percival as the two cut through the center of the market to the weaponsmith on the other side of it.  Rafa purchased a solid, ironwood staff, five times as expensive as the original object of his intention, and on the way back through the market, Percy quickened his step so that he could walk beside the furious Human instead of behind him.

"Are you- do you see anything?  Strange?"

"No," Rafa countered in a low but terse voice.  "Just colors.  And those only with my eyes shut."

"So it- you feel- logical?"

"Got more sense now than I did some weeks gone," came the bitter reply.  "Plenty logical."

The two passed the street where Deryn's tavern sat, and Rafa didn't even look down the street to see what might have been going on there.  Percy peeked behind the former soldier's shoulder, but didn't dare fall behind in pace.

"Why- if I may ask- why're you so angry?"

Rafa stopped short, thoroughly stunning Percy yet again.  With a sigh, he turned his head toward his bird-boned traveling companion.  "What if somebody decided that you were the best person to try a dish, even though they knew that one of the ingredients would make you ill, perhaps even kill you?  If you found that out, about a second away from swallowing the first bite, what would you think of doing to that person?"

Percy shook his head.  "That's... actually, that's happened to me.  Although it... it was actually... you see, the townspeople thought I was a demon.  Or... something.  I don't blame them, I mean look at me, but... but I did leave town.  Immediately."

Rafa shook his own head with sharp annoyance.  "Where's the cave?"

Without any further conversation, Percy glanced around as if to check whether or not the two were being followed, then began running toward the city gates.  Rafa blinked for a few seconds, surprised, but took off soon afterward.  As it turned out, the mage needed the head start, because the former soldier caught up and kept pace with him easily in mere moments.

About a half hour into the run, Rafa saw a phantom sword soaring toward Percy as though it had been thrown.

"Get down!" he hollered, taking the thin-boned man down to the ground easily.

"What do you see?" Percy asked, taking hold of Rafa's arm.

"It wasn't there, was it?" Rafa breathed, rolling over onto his back.

"What was it?" Percy asked again, sitting up so that he was at Rafa's side.

"A sword," Rafa replied, closing his eyes.   A wash of colors flooded the backs of his eyelids instantly, and for a moment, he thought he would fall completely asleep without being able to do anything about it.  "One hander, one edge.  Like it was going to hit you."

"From where and toward where?" the mage asked, an otherworldly tone underscoring his own flat tenor.

The tan skinned Human took a breath as though he were trying to inhale water.  Behind his lids, the whirlpool of color swirled and danced around him until it was suddenly split through by the same sword.

"My left," he replied, somehow confused at the sound of his own voice.  "Toward...you...your chest, I guess?  You're shorter... and so was Hophni.  Poor fuck."

Percy pulled his hood back slightly so that his peripheral vision would be uninhibited.  The scars around his eyes radiated an acid green, and he looked around the area slowly.  To his eyes, the mundane world lost color, draining into whites, greys, and blacks.

"Can you get up?" he asked, once his focus fell on a fading streak of red that seemed to dash to his right.

"Huh?" Rafa grunted, finding himself half-asleep.  "Yeah-  yeah."

Percy spared a second to look over at Rafa, and was shocked to see that the man had retained his natural color, even though everything else around him was greyscale.

"Come on," the mage urged.  "It went this way, didn't it?"

The former soldier didn't reply verbally.  He instead rolled over, got up and found his bearings for a few moments before turning toward what Percy saw as the fading red trail.

"It- wait- is that-"

And with that, Rafa began trotting past the mage, following the trail as though he himself could see it.  Percy had to run behind him to catch up and keep pace, but as the two moved, the trail of color grew brighter and brighter.  Suddenly, Rafa put his arm in front of Percy, who crashed ungraciously into it.

"Don't look- it's Dan and Merri.  Both of them are... I'm sorry, they're mauled to death.  Don't look; it's... ugh, just don't."

"Oh," Percy said strangely, then bit the backs of his lips.  He did not see two torn up bodies.  He did, however, see a fragment of a broken sword about five feet away from Rafa's feet, and an iron arrowhead at about twice that distance.  The brilliant red trail, now fading into the natural colors of the real world, hovered like a fog right above both items.

Kim might have sent these items here somehow, he thought.  But how is this mundane man seeing-

"Did they actually take their potions?" Rafa asked, looking expectantly at the mage.


"I saw Dan take his as soon as Merri handed it to him," Percy replied as the colors of the real world began to drain back into his view.  A warning growl sounded in the vicinity, and the mage lost what little color resided in his cheeks.  "I... I think we'd better...we're almost there, so..."

Percy resisted the urge to take physical hold of Rafa as the two turned back around and headed toward the cave again.  About fifty feet away from it, Rafa stopped again, although thankfully, he didn't touch Percy.

"Wait," he commanded, crouching with his staff at the ready.  "Can't do anything about this.  Just- find a tree, get behind it.  You hear anything, anything, you run.  Run like the maw of Baator is opening up below you."

Percy nodded and turned to get behind a tree, then peeked out to spy on Rafa's progress.  Certainly enough, though there had been no visible barrier before the two of them at first, with a whispered spell, the mage's spellscarred eyes perceived a wall of radiant magic energy.

Kim's wall ward! Percy thought, bitterly convicted.  She's alive enough to maintain this spell.  He won't get through it, unless she dies trying to sustain it.

Rafa, however, moved forward as though he meant to do just that.  He could see the barrier in a strange and beautiful glory, all reds, yellows, oranges, violets, and blues.  The former soldier kept a careful distance of about thirty feet as he walked parallel to it, sensing within himself different levels of awareness in his body.  In about fourty yards, he stopped, sensing a wave of weariness spreading from his chest out through the muscles in his upper body.

Okay, he thought to himself confidently.  He turned resolutely toward the wall, closed his eyes, and began running forward.

Percy, watching, clenched his teeth in terror.  How can he see- whatever it is?  How can he know what it will do to him?  Even I don't know which ward Kim's put up.

A sea of color swam around Rafa as he passed straight through the warded area, and images drifted by on both sides of him- unrecognizable faces, bits of foreign places, animals he had never seen before.  Whispers in a language that he could not comprehend filled his mind and heart until he felt as though the words would pour out of his own mouth, if for no other reason than that there could not possibly be any more room in his body for them.  He clung to none of these sensations, knowing without knowledge that in the moment that he did, the power of the ward would overtake him.

A great roar, one with an accompanying physical vibration that indicated that it was real, gave the former soldier pause at last.  He dared to open his eyes, finding as he did that while he had survived the energy draining wall of magic, he had also managed to run directly into the bear- or at least one of them.  Its fur was a sleek black, and although it was clearly heavier and wider than the Human male that threatened it, when it stood on its hind legs and roared, Rafa began laughing.

"I'm taller than you!" he exclaimed as though it were hilarious.

A second roar overlapped with the first, and Rafa, through his persisting chuckles, looked cautiously around to see if another bear were around.  Seeing the second bear off to his right side, he whipped his quarterstaff around himself a few times.

"Aw, ye've the right.  I'm off my tits m'boy-o, but look ye, I'll be serious now.  To business, eh?"

"Wait, don't!" called a familiar, but weakened voice.  "I remember him.  He's not a danger to any of us- or he won't be, if you stop looking as though you're defending a meal."

The bear immediately in front of Rafa stopped roaring abruptly and turned over its shoulder, thudding down to the ground with a huff.  The second bear trundled over toward a small outcropping of stone that had to be the cave.  Rafa, for his part, nodded his thanks to both bears as though he were addressing old friends, tucked his quarterstaff up behind his arm, and ran past the closer of the two.  Splotches of  substances that he somehow felt could only be blood shone with unnatural colors- an orangy, burned yellow, a muddy brownish green, and a light, otherworldly purple.  As he grew closer to the cave, he saw more and more of each, until at last he found Kim sitting in a wide pool of the glowing purple life flow.  It seemed to softly whisper to him as the wall had, breathing words into his head that he could neither understand nor pronounce.  Overcome with the strange awareness of them, he knelt before her.  Behind him, he heard both bears make short barking noises at each other, as though they were in a conversation- one that he felt as though he should understand.

"Percy told you," Kim said sadly.  "He told you, didn't he?"

"Told me what?" Rafa asked in a still-reverent voice.

"That I... was a priestess..."

"No," Rafa said, shaking his head.  "I just... it... I see it.  I feel it, I don't know.  I don't know anything."

Kim looked at the Human before her for a few moments.

"You do," she said softly.  "You do know."

"I just-"

Rafa looked up at her, and noted that she had managed to sit all the way up.  Gashes down her back that had been freely bleeding were trying to scab, and although she seemed ashen and tired, there was a new stability about her that cheered his spirit.  What surprised him was that she reached out to him with both hands, hands that had clearly been either bitten or cut badly in a fall, she wrapped them around his head so that he had to lean forward, as if in prayer.

"A cleric you may not be, Rafael, but what you are- what you will be, rather- must not be denied," Kim counseled as she gingerly pulled her scabbed fingers through the dark hair.  "If you will not believe or understand the abilities you wield, call upon that power which you know, and let whatever happens prove me right or wrong."

"My lady misses her mark," Rafa replied, shaking his head.  "I have no art with magic."

"Perhaps not magic," Kim insisted.  "But you have something, because I can feel it."

Rafa took Kim's hands off his head and leaned his head on the backs of them as though he would beg her for mercy.  Around him, as soon as he closed his eyes, colors, albeit now faded in their intensity, ebbed and flowed between the Drow and himself, and the unintelligible words somehow flowed with them like seaweed on the surface of the water.  Rafa sighed, disturbing the colors, and the words themselves rose up, manifesting whole and visibly, from the color stream, in a language that Rafa knew he did not understand- filled with dashes, umlauts, and accent marks that he couldn't fathom.  Just as he lamented this ignorance, however, the surfaces of the words began to peel away to reveal actual, identifiable Common, as though those words had merely been wearing the others like cloaks.  Used to being unable to parse one written thing from another without help, Rafa was stunned to be able to understand every single one.  He read, in fact, his own words to Silveredge some weeks before-

"I command but few words, my lady, and those all found in prayer books."

It took him all of two seconds to realize that he had spoken the words aloud.

"Then speak those," Kim whispered.  "Speak what you know, and let it take you to what you don't."

And as if in response, the uncovered words before Rafa's closed eyes exploded outward, kissing him with a water-like spray that somehow made the color stream brighter again.  In their places, more words arose, covered at first with the language that he did not recognize.

I do not have this language, Rafa thought, more to whomever was responsible for what he was seeing than to himself.  The words, eager to be understood, again shed their outer skin, leaving a perfect Common prayer- one of the first ones he'd learned from his great grandfather.

"Lady, whose hand upon the Wheel doth rest,
When you but hear son's plea, that son is blest.
I pray you, bind what good should here hold fast,
And leave go out all ill which should be past.
All kin, or keep, or meal, or monies due
That we'd fain claim are naught, if you us sue;
Therefore we pray not that you give what's ours,
But lend, from your grace, unmerited powers."

Rafa hardly said the words so much as allowed them to tumble out of him.  As he said them aloud, they seemed to echo around him, filling the actual space with a radiant blue energy that grew brighter and brighter.  They pushed each other around him and whirled like a tornado, faster and tighter, until a tight beam of ethereal blue light finally shot around his frame, dove through his back, and shot through the place where his heart should be toward Kim.  It engulfed her totally for a few seconds, tearing over her skin like a flame over pure liquor, and as it did, scabs, blood, and scrapes were all blasted away, leaving nothing but fully restored, flawless black skin behind.  Shocked, Rafa opened his eyes to find that the vision, as far as Kim's physical situation was concerned, was not just a hopeful dream, but reality.

The dark Elf, for her part, smiled and stood up.  The vicious rips and tears in her robes were the only evidence to her ordeal, and the two bears, who had patiently sat behind the kneeling Rafa, ambled over to amiably sniff at her.

"Percival!" she called, waving a hand to dispel her wall spell.  "Come on out.  There's no danger here."

The spellscarred mage, overwhelmingly overjoyed to hear his compatriot's voice so strongly and clearly, ran like a madman over toward the cave.  The bears turned around, snarling at once, but Kim put her finger to her lips and shushed them.

"Never mind him," she soothed.  "We're all allies here, I promise you."

"Kim, I- I thought- ugh," Percy puffed, leaning his hands on his knees when he'd gotten within five feet of the Drow and the Human.  "Merri said-"

"Yes, please, tell me all about how she told you I was already dead," Kim interrupted.  "She and Dan deserve each other.  I hope they're satisfied."

"She and Dan are dead," Rafa replied quietly.

"Ha-ha.  Well, they both deserve that, too," Kim spat acridly.

"How did you get the bear- well, both bears, obviously- to leave you alone?" Percy said, still winded.

Kim smiled knowingly, reaching down to pat one of the two large animals.  " The sanctuary spell, so that we could get some peace, and then a good, long talk.  How did you get Ser Unessmus to escort you here?"

"It wasn't my original intent," Percy admitted, finally standing straight.  "I suppose I was a right pitiable sight on the roads, for there, with liquor and brainweed cooking his brain in its own humors, he himself decided he would go back with me to face the bear- or what we thought was just the one bear."

"Percy thought that all there'd be left of you was bones to bury, but... that's important," Rafa managed, standing up and looking down at one of the bears.  "You know.  Closure."

"I see," Kim mused, looking up at the dark haired fighter intently before standing straight herself.  "Well, I'm alive, and healed, thanks to you.  I owe you my life.  What can this servant of Eilistraee do for you?"

"Karri, Deryn, and Lishrae," Percy reminded perfectly.  "I don't know why, but they're all on the list of priorities."

"It... I just have some questions, that's all," Rafa frowned, looking sharply at Percival as though he'd told a rather dear secret.

"If your way is cloudy, I can perform an augury for you," Kim suggested.

Rafa looked over toward the spot at which he'd seen Dan and Merri's bodies.  He looked beyond Kim toward the blood splotches, which were now all uniformly dark.  At first he thought to deny the offer, then he remembered his own words against Dan, who for whatever reason had become adept at rejecting good counsel.

"I'd like that," he admitted, looking back down to the bears that now peacefully flanked Kim at last.  "Come, and you can rest at Deryn's inn.  Both she and Karri are in the same place, anyhow."

"I go gladly," Kim smirked, looking to a similarly amused Percy.  "And if I may- I've done my share of alchemy, down in the Underdark.  Of all the things such lotions, potions, solutions, and fumes will do, creating a divine connection where none exists, irrespective of how tenuous and temporary, is absolutely not one of them."